- All articles

All articles

- TWIBS: Iowa Lawmakers Hate Iowans

- How Resiliant Are You?

- Does The New York Times Want to Eradicate Trans People?

- SAVE America Act Designed to Doom Americans

- Through the Medium of Comics, Trans Artists Tell Their Stories

- Trans on Tape: The Chicago Teachers’ Union Shows Up For Trans Community And Trans Leaders Speak On A Showing Of Heightened Scrutiny

- Republicans Signal Anti-Trans Intent

MAR 13, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT | ALYSSA STEINSIEK | SOURCE

TWIBS: Iowa Lawmakers Hate Iowans

Iowa’s state legislature has passed a bill disallowing municipal protections for marginalized Iowans, who have been abundantly clear about who they want to protect.

by Aly Gibbs

This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s longest running column! Every Friday, Aly Gibbs digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.

Folks, freedom ain’t free… uh, or expensive. It’s a myth, actually! At least when it comes to America, which I’ve been told my whole life is the land of the free and the home of the brave, but actually seems to be a nation of cowards who want to restrict the civil liberties of minority citizens as much as they possibly can.

So, Iowa passed a law Tuesday that disallows municipalities from establishing ordinance that would provide civil anti-discrimination protection for anybody who isn’t already included in the Iowa Civil Rights Act. Or, as the case may be, anybody who was included in the Iowa Civil Rights Act, but was removed by Republican lawmakers as part of their genocidal culture war against transgender Americans.

I reported on this last month, knowing that the proposed law, House Study Bill 664 (now House File 2541), was very likely to pass through the Iowa state legislature. The Iowa General Assembly has been majority Republican since 2016, and I don’t need to tell you that modern conservatism is dominated by members of an unhinged death cult centered around obliterating anybody who is not white, cisgender and heterosexual (and preferably a man), or otherwise does not express complete obeisance to those people as their supreme rulers. Deviation from these “cultural norms” must be punished, and Iowa’s state lawmakers are doing just that.

In Iowa City, Laura Bergus, a city council member and lawyer, told The Associated Press that Iowa City enacted their own local protections against discrimination based on gender identity almost 30 years ago. When state lawmakers rolled back civil protections for trans Iowans (and, it should be mentioned, made it impossible for any trans person born in Iowa to have the gender marker on their birth certificate amended), Iowa City passed a new resolution to reaffirm their right to protect local citizens. HF2541 now makes that sort of legal affirmation unlawful.

Bergus described the new law as “extreme overreach,” and said that Iowa City is considering legal action against the state.

Like I mentioned in my reporting last month, this discriminatory legislation is explicitly unwanted by a large percentage of Iowans. Nearly a third of Iowa lives in a city or county where local anti-discrimination laws were passed to protect trans Iowans. In the last year, countless Iowans have turned out to show support for their trans friends and neighbors. Even some Republican lawmakers and voters in Iowa were not on board with the initial amendment made to the Iowa Civil Rights Act.

Republican lawmakers in Iowa have repeatedly bleated that the state cannot be governed by, as they call it, a “hodgepodge” of disparate civil rights laws. They believed that, if the state says trans people are not protected from discrimination, it would create problems for enforcing the law in municipalities that say trans people do deserve that protection.

There is, of course, a simple solution to this perceived problem:

Quit being fucking cowards and restore the Iowa Civil Rights Act to a state that protects all Iowans, rather than picking and choosing who deserves civil rights and who doesn’t. Stop waging this unbearable, meaningless genocide against trans Americans, and simply let us live our lives in peace, you miserable bastards.

Aly Gibbs (She/They) is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/twibs-iowa-lawmakers-hate-iowans at Mar 13, 2026, 7:19 PM EDT.

MAR 12, 2026, 7:07 AM EDT | ASSIGNED | SOURCE

How Resiliant Are You?

To thrive as a trans person in a hostile world, you’ll need resilience. What is resilience and how resilient are you, personally?

by Veronica Esposito

As the world closes in on trans people and doors close around us, it is more important than ever to stay mentally healthy. Therapist and writer Veronica Esposito brings you the first of a three part series on resilience and how to build and manage it.

Part I: The Hurricane

Note: Most of the papers linked in these articles are freely available via Google Scholar. In many cases it is not possible to provide a download link because the links generated by search engines are not permanent. Readers are encouraged to read these papers for themselves by visiting https://scholar.google.com/, entering the title of the paper, and clicking on the link marked “[PDF]” for the full text of the article.

Imagine the average day of a trans person circa 2026. They wake up and prepare breakfast, and over their morning coffee read about the latest thing the president has said to slur their community. While checking the news they also hear about a proposed law in a largely transphobic state that would chip away at trans people’s dignity and ability to live. They see that a leading paper has published yet another opinion column arguing against trans rights, and they ruefully note that it’s full of falsehood and mischaracterizations that no editor seemed to challenge before publication.

On the way to work their phone pings, an automated message from their doctor reminding them to do some bloodwork for their HRT prescription. On the message they’re deadnamed, which has happened every now and then for years—no one at their medical provider seems to know how to make it stop, and so the matter has just become moot.

After work they meet a new friend for drinks, and as they chat, our imaginary trans person carefully avoids certain details of their past, as they’re not sure if they’re ready to come out to this new friend as trans or not. After drinks, as they’re winding down at home, they think about an upcoming gathering that they'll be attending over the weekend and start to worry that they’ll be rejected by the guests for being trans. As they drift off to sleep they think about what a curse it is to be born trans and wish they could just be a normal person.

This average day in the life of a trans person is filled with a bunch of different stressors that they have to deal with, many of which are what social scientists call “distal” and “proximal” stressors. These stressors were first conceptualized in a paper by Ilan H. Meyer that discussed them in regards to LGB individuals. Meyer realized that in order to fully understand resilience in LGB populations, new concepts were needed; these concepts have since been applied to trans people as well.

So what exactly are distal and proximal stressors? Meyer defined distal stressors as “objective stressors in that they do not depend on an individual’s perceptions or appraisals”—that is, things that will be stressful regardless of how a person views things, meaning that they have little control over them. By contrast, Meyer writes that proximal stressors “are more subjective and are therefore related to self-identity.” These are things that largely depend on how we see ourselves—thus we have some measure of control over them.

In the above vignette, distal stressors might include the slurs of the president, that opinion column, transphobic legislative actions taken by states, or the seemingly impossible to end deadnaming at the hands of their medical provider. You can imagine distal stressors as being a little like the weather—we can’t really do much to change them, and we just have to figure out as best we can how to live with the stress they can cause.

In the example above, the proximal stressors might include our trans person’s choice to conceal their identity while building a new relationship, their pre-emptive expectation to be rejected at the weekend gathering, and their choice to see their own transness as a purely negative thing. These things are stressful in part because of their beliefs and perceptions.

All of the stressors I have discussed in this imaginary trans person’s life are forms of “minority stress,” which has been defined as “excess stress to which individuals from stigmatized social categories are exposed as a result of their social, often a minority, position.” You can think of minority stress as extra special “members only” stressors that members of oppressed groups get to experience, on top of the normal stressors that everyone experiences at some point or another. Minority stress was first conceptualized in 1981 in regards to LGBT individuals in the book Minority Stress in Lesbian Women by Winn Kelly Brooks, and it has since been generalized to apply to any kind of stigmatized group. It is now a cornerstone of our modern understanding of oppression.

All of these minority stressors have to be dealt with in some way in order for our trans person to survive and—hopefully—manage to thrive. If they’re not dealt with, they can have serious consequences: over time, our trans person might begin to lose hope and start to feel seriously depressed. They might get so overwhelmed by all the added burdens of being trans that they become burned out and withdraw from life. These stressors could also build up into disabling levels of anxiety, or our trans person could begin to internalize some of these stresses as self-criticism and self-hatred, leading to problematic levels of shame.

Resilience is figuring out how to deal with these stressors so that they don’t turn into serious issues that prevent someone from living an amazing life full of happiness, new experiences, creativity, hopefulness, and community. You can think of resilience as interdicting distal stressors before they’re able to get to us and cause serious mental health issues; resilience is able to intercept proximal stressors before they’re able to join forces with distal stressors to do the same. They’re a little like antibodies that can help keep us healthy and happy, even when the world tries to take us away from our true selves.

If it feels like it’s so much harder to be a resilient trans person these days, that’s because the distal stressors have been dialed way, way up, and our forms of resilience are often being tampered with. To use the weather analogy, maybe in the mid-2010s, all the average trans person needed was an umbrella to handle the moderate rain of distal stressors. But now that rain has been augmented into something more like a hurricane, and that umbrella just won’t do. What’s worse, maybe 10 years ago it felt like so many more people were out there wanting to give us shelter from the rain, but now it seems like many of those people are disappearing as institutions and cultural figures turn against trans acceptance.

Even for those who have been very resilient, what worked previously probably just isn’t enough right now. We need to be really on the ball, and we need to find as many ways as we can to deal with all these stressors, both the distal and proximate ones.

Trans and Nonbinary Researchers to the Rescue

Our understanding of resilience is in many ways still in its formative stages—it was only about 20 - 25 years ago that we began looking at resilience from a holistic perspective and applying it to virtually everyone. Our understanding of resilience as it pertains to gender and sexual minorities is younger still. We’ll be looking at this more throughout the series and how trans and queer scholars have added to our knowledge.

In recent decades, a number of essential trans and nonbinary researchers have been doing incredible work to help us best understand resilience as it pertains to trans people. Among them are Jae Puckett, Rylan J Testa, and Em Matsuno, whose work this series draws on heavily. In addition, we are indebted to scholars from other marginalized groups, such as the Black scholar Bryana H. French, who have advanced our understanding of minority stress and radical healing. (Keep an eye out for mentions of their work throughout the series—with links so that you can read it for yourself)

The verdict of this research is clear: when it comes to stress and resilience, there are factors unique to trans people, and our understanding of how to best build trans resilience is still evolving. Through these efforts we have made great strides forward in understanding the unique stressors that impact the lives of trans individuals, and what works best for us to be resilient in the face of the onslaught, the coming years are likely to seriously advance our understanding and the tools we have in the fight to thrive.

So How Resilient Are You?

Take a moment to consider your own life. If you’re trans, what kinds of distal and proximate stressors do you face as regards that part of your identity? How has your experience of stress changed since Donald Trump took office last year? What coping mechanisms do you use to be resilient, and where do you think you could build up your skills?

In answering these questions, a good place to start in doing our own resilience work is to get a baseline reading of your current stressors and resilience level. There are a number of different measures of resilience out there, among them the Brief Resilience Scale, the University of Washington Resilience Scale, the Ego Resilience Scale (also known as the Ego-Resiliency Scale), and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. Unfortunately, due to the work of Puckett and colleagues, we know that these measures miss important forms of stress and resilience unique to trans people.

For a measurement tool that better captures the full experiences of trans people, we turn to the scholar and counselor Rylan J. Testa, who has been a leader in formulating ways to understand trans minority stress and resilience. As a part of his research he created a tool called the Gender Minority Stress and Resilience Measure (GMSR).

The GMSR is not a do-it-at-home test that you can take to measure your resilience—rather, it’s a measurement tool for researchers who want to study various factors that may impact the stress and resilience of trans people. This means that it doesn’t have a scoring feature where readers can tally up their responses and be told how stressed or resilient they are. But it is a good starting point for exploring the various stressors and resiliences that may be impacting you.

Readers are encouraged to download that measure at the link above, read through the various prompts, and self-evaluate for areas where they might be particularly stressed or not, and where they rate high or low on resilience. This will help give an idea of where your strengths and weaknesses are. This would be a wonderful piece to bring into a therapy session to explore with your therapist, or something to talk more about with a trusted trans friend.

Beyond the GMSR, other initiatives are afoot. Matsuno has spearheaded the creation of various measures of stress and resilience, including one specifically designed to meet the needs of nonbinary people, and one that parents and their trans children can use to see how well the latter are being supported by the former. Readers who fall into these categories are encouraged to follow the above link and check out these tools.

Mastuno and Puckett continue to be on the cutting edge of resilience studies, currently working on their own tool to best conceptualize resilience in trans people of color. Even as so many forces in this world seek to destroy our resilience and sap away at our ability to thrive, trans and nonbinary researchers continue their work of better understanding what makes us resilient to more and more granular degrees, working to best understand how best to instill resilience into our community.

A Road Map

This first part of the Resilience Series has sketched out just what resilience is and how it looks specifically for trans people. We’ve learned why it feels so much harder to be resilient these days.

Part II will center around the history of resilience—how the concept emerged in the 1970s and evolved to our present-day understanding. We’ll look at the difference between coping and healing and why that’s crucial for trans lives.

Part III will turn to an in-depth look at specific tools to use to build resilience. We will examine trans-specific ways of healing and thriving, in spite of the enormous assaults on our rights and our community.

Veronica Esposito (she/her) is a writer and therapist based in the Bay Area. She writes regularly for The Guardian, Xtra Magazine, and KQED, the NPR member station for Northern California, on the arts, mental health, and LGBTQ+ issues.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/how-resilient-are-you at Mar 13, 2026, 7:19 PM EDT.

MAR 11, 2026, 10:00 AM EDT | ASSIGNED | SOURCE

Does The New York Times Want to Eradicate Trans People?

An analysis of its coverage reveals a pattern of misrepresentations, deceptions, distortions, the exclusion of trans voices, and the endorsement of contempt.

Opinion by Billie Jean Sweeney

Is it hyperbolic when critics of The New York Times say its publisher and top editors are intent on eradicating trans people? Dozens of documented instances of bias have dogged its coverage for years, but a flurry of new and newly discovered examples reflect the outlet’s sustained determination to pursue an activist anti-trans agenda.

A review by Assigned Media of four years of news and opinion pieces, placing particular emphasis on recent revelations, shows that the Times has  misrepresented the positions of medical organizations, deceived readers with misleading assertions, averted its eyes to the right-wing money powering the anti-trans movement and zealously defended a prominent bigot, JK Rowling. Its newsroom still does not hire or assign trans journalists to cover trans issues — a de facto ban that exemplifies prejudice — and it suppresses the expression of dissenting queer viewpoints internally.

As a veteran former editor on The Times’s International Desk, I’ve witnessed this campaign up close.

Though the Times produces a vast number of words about transgender people — far and away more stories than any other major news outlet so far this year, according to our tracker — it’s been three years since it has published any in-depth examination of the hard-right groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Heritage Foundation that have driven the anti-trans movement. Newsrooms with far fewer resources, such as Mother Jones, have undertaken such efforts, revealing the way anti-trans politics underpins the right wing’s broader anti-feminist agenda, something that affects the vast majority of Americans.

Corporate spokespeople routinely defend the Times’s coverage as fair and even empathetic, but editors for both its news and opinion pages have continued to make choices that legitimize and elevate right-wing positions intended to drive trans people out of public life, denying us access to health care, public facilities, the right to freedom of movement and association and the documentation needed to vote and conduct basic societal functions.

Outright misrepresentations are characteristic of the paper’s coverage. Late last month, both the American Psychological Association and the American Medical Association suggested that the Times had mischaracterized their positions in its news and opinion pages in ways that falsely implied a softening of their longtime support for gender affirming care.

Moreover, the Times’s accounts of a position statement issued by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons ellided important details about the highly politicized nature of the group's decision, which bypassed its own expert task force. Put together, the Times’s reporting on the three groups created a large-scale misportrayal of the state of medical science to serve its leaders’ own narrative that even the most politically driven questions about care are reasons to abandon long-held professional consensus.

On at least five prior occasions dating to 2022 medical groups, experts, advocacy organizations and parents themselves have taken the extraordinary step of issuing public statements saying that The Times had distorted their positions. In every case we could find, the misrepresentation went in only one direction, twisting words to fit the outlet’s political agenda against gender affirming care and more broadly against trans people themselves. In one case, the parent of a trans child said she had been cruelly deceived and manipulated by a Times reporter.

The Times has preyed upon not only trans families, but on its own readers who understandably lack a detailed understanding of trans issues and rely upon honest brokers of fact.

In an example newly uncovered by Assigned Media, the Times sweepingly declared last year that “a coalition of critics of youth gender medicine from both the right and the left have argued for banning the treatments.” But no such broad coalition existed, then or now. The text of the Times’s July 2025 story, which detailed the federal government’s judicial attacks on health care providers, offered no evidence for its bold assertion. The sole support for this claim? Two embedded links.

One link went to the “LGB Courage Coalition,” a trans-exclusionary group whose primary activity is publishing on Substack. The other went to an extremist group that calls itself “Democratic” but whose public filings provide no substantiation of any link to the party, a faction or prominent member, Assigned Media found in an investigation published last month. The website for the group, known by the initials DIAG, is replete with transphobic smears and its most prominent member is closely allied with Genspect, the anti-queer hate group.

Neither of the groups portrayed by the Times as a “coalition” cutting across the political spectrum could be fairly described as “on the left.” But few readers would ever pick up on this deception.

This deceptive misuse of terminology is years-long. In a January 2023 article, the Times labored repeatedly to call the unsupportive parents it interviewed “liberal” while somehow failing to disclose to readers that the court cases asserting the preeminence of parental rights were being brought exclusively by conservative anti-trans groups.

The Times furthers its activist campaign in other ways that are not evident to a casual reader. It has become an ardent promoter of the Charles Koch-funded Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which positions itself as an alternative to the ACLU. Among other positions, FIRE has supported the cruelly anti-queer malpractice of conversion therapy, blamed trans people as a class for “cancel culture” and has come to the aid of the shadowy anti-trans group DIAG.

While the Times sought to vilify the ACLU for defending trans people in a piece last year that mimicked the positions of the right wing hate group Alliance Defending Freedom, it has lavished FIRE with gauzy, uncritical coverage and handed its chief executive multiple guest essay opportunities on its opinion pages.

For an outlet eager to embrace anti-trans ideologues, the Times has demonstrated a years-long institutional determination to cast every trans person who dares speak up for themselves as an “activist,” to declare our every expression as unreasonable and to close off any questions about its coverage.

When hundreds of the New York Times’s own freelance contributors submitted a letter to its leadership in February 2023 noting a growing pattern of bias, a corporate spokesperson dismissed their concerns out of hand as those of “advocates.” It never followed up on their requests for a discussion.

Less known publicly was an internal effort about this time by queer newsroom staffers to document this same pattern of bias and bring it to the leadership’s attention. Within 18 months, the executive editor closed down all avenues of internal discussion, declaring “the newsroom is not a safe space” even as he created a “safe space” for himself and other top leaders.

This adversarial institutional stance has veered into outright contempt in its news pages, infecting what readers see. In one notable instance just weeks before Trump began waging his own well-telegraphed campaign to eradicate trans people, the first sentence of a New York Times news story said this: “To get on the wrong side of transgender activists is often to endure their unsparing criticism.” The story did not include a source to back up this characterization.

A trans advocate quoted in the piece issued a statement soon after to say that  the Times had taken his views out of context, a complaint that runs through all of the documented instances in which experts and medical groups interviewed by the Times have felt compelled to issue their own corrective statements.

The absence of trans voices has been notable in both the Times’s coverage and in coverage throughout major media. More than two-thirds of stories all about us fail to include a single quote from even one of us.

Other major outlets have certainly campaigned against trans people. Bari Weiss’s Free Press and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News have promoted falsehoods and unabashedly fostered bigotry. The Atlantic has been a leading purveyor of anti-trans perspectives among elite outlets, such as its recent effort to scapegoat trans people in “defense of effeminate boys,” a story that didn’t bother to cite any evidence or quote any expert to support its specious premise.

But the Atlantic’s reach, with one million-plus subscribers, is dwarfed by The Times, which claims over 12 million subscribers. The Times’s news stories, many of them deeply flawed, have nonetheless been directly cited in many dozens of court briefs, government memos, state legislative initiatives and judicial rulings at the highest level, the Supreme Court.

The Times’s publisher and top editors know well that their actions carry special weight, and will directly affect the lives, safety and livelihoods of millions of trans people and their families.

So to answer the question we posed in our headline. I’m going to turn first to the publisher AG Sulzberger’s 2023 New Yorker interview with David Remnick. In it, he acknowledges that there are “all sorts of bad faith actors who are trying to undermine trans people and attack trans rights in this country.”

Is the Times, as he asserted in the interview, accurately and fairly representing what he called a debate among medical professionals? If so, why does it ignore inconvenient facts like the legislative-commissioned review in Utah that backed gender-affirming care? Why does the Times consistently misrepresent the positions of European nations? Why has it uncritically promoted a right-wing activist’s false accusations of misdeeds in Missouri? Why do medical groups keep saying the Times misportrays its positions?

Is the Times, as Sulzberger said then, committed to chronicling the rise in bigotry and prejudice? If so, why have its leaders turned a blind eye to the role of monied and influential right-wing groups in powering the anti-trans movement? Publishing roundups of mounting legislative attacks and incremental stories with some paragraphs of political context doesn't represent a top-level commitment to chronicling the roots, tactics and figures behind this historic campaign against a small vulnerable minority.

And why, at the same time, has it championed a right-wing funded “free speech” group that unabashedly promotes anti-queer positions?

Sulzberger said back in 2023 that he has talked to trans people. But who are they? Not on his staff, or among his contributors. No trans group or prominent individual has emerged publicly to say they are advising or are supportive of the Times’s coverage. In fact, trans people, their families and allies who have tried to raise critical questions have been met with resentment and animus.

“We’ve never written a story that questions whether trans people exist or should exist,” Sulzberger also stated in his 2023 interview with Remnick.

But the Times' actions have spoken ever more loudly. The company’s years-long institutional record reflects a determined willingness to deceptively tilt the scales in its representations of medical care and definitional and scientific issues, and that in turn has fueled the right wing’s explicit effort to force trans people from all aspects of public life.

The Times is an agent of this drive to eradicate trans people.

Billie Jean Sweeney (she/her) is a freelance editor, reporter and advocate. She helped direct international news coverage for The New York Times and coverage of New York City for The Associated Press. She also served as editorial director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, where she defended international press freedom. At The Hartford Courant she led an award-winning investigation into the deadly use of restraints in mental health institutions. For Assigned Media, she’s written about the right wing’s attacks on young trans athletes and how mainstream media adopted and spread anti-trans disinformation.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/does-new-york-times-want-to-eradicate-trans at Mar 13, 2026, 7:19 PM EDT.

MAR 11, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT | ALYSSA STEINSIEK | SOURCE

SAVE America Act Designed to Doom Americans

A nasty piece of legislation that failed to pass last year has been reborn, nastier than before, and the president really wants it to pass.

Opinion, by Aly Gibbs

Have you heard of the “SAVE America Act”?

It’s the equally unpopular sequel to H.R.22/S.128 (just “The SAVE Act”), a bill proposed last year that would have demanded American voters present an aggressively narrow range of documents that prove their citizenship when registering to vote. This bill would have acted as voter suppression against groups such as tribal natives, married women who have changed their last name, and the children of military personnel born overseas while their parents were stationed outside of the United States. Many Americans do not have ready access to the documents demanded as proof of citizenship. Fortunately, the bill died a quiet and ignominious death in the Senate last year, where it was received but never voted on.

Unfortunately, The SAVE Act has been resurrected as H.R.7296, the SAVE America Act, which passed the House of Representatives in February… and still hasn’t been brought up for a vote in the Senate, per reporting from The 19th. In a bizarre turn of events, Donald Trump is now insisting that he won’t pass any other legislation sent to him by the Senate until they pass the SAVE America Act, which he would also like them to rewrite to include bans on transgender girls and women participating in sports, and gender-affirming care for minors. The latter he misconstrues as the “mutilization” [sic] of trans youth, a fictitious and intentionally inflammatory framing that ignores the incredible rareness of surgeries among trans youth. These changes, he said, would be “the easiest thing to get passed that you’ve ever had. Each one, it’s ‘best of,’ best of Trump.”

Few agree. The bill, already highly polarized for the blatant and needless harm it would do to many Americans, won’t necessarily be easier for Senate Democrats to vote for should a bunch of anti-trans gibberish be tacked onto it to further the president’s unhinged and obsessive culture war against a group that represents, at most, 1% of the American population. Furthermore, the House, who would have to rewrite the act and pass it a second time, is currently on recess and won’t return to work until the 16th.

The act would also severely limit mail-in voting, which is the only kind of voting available in eight states and Washington DC, and demands that states put in a tremendous amount of work to ensure that everybody who votes is a US citizen. It is already illegal for non-citizens to vote, and there is no strong evidence that non-citizens voting has ever impacted an election, but states routinely investigate and prosecute non-citizen voting when it does happen. The SAVE America Act would stress our electoral system to an incredible degree, while providing no new funds for states to enact these changes, and no grace period in which they may do so.

Democrat Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader, spoke unequivocally against Democrats’ support of the SAVE America Act.

“The SAVE Act is nothing more than Jim Crow 2.0,” Schumer said Monday on the Senate floor. “It is a voter suppression bill. It takes away vote by mail. It makes it harder for people to register, and would require states to hand over voter rolls to election deniers at the Department of Justice … and now Donald Trump says he will not sign any bill to lower costs, lower rent, lower groceries, until Congress passes this bill taking away tens of millions of citizens’ right to vote … there will be total gridlock in Congress. On the other hand, if the SAVE Act does pass, democracy will be in very serious danger … Democrats will make sure that never happens.”

It’s nice to hear Schumer stand firm on something, even if he has to ramble on about the price of gas while the de-personification of trans Americans is well underway. Under most circumstances I am reluctant to trust in the soft, pudding-like spine of Chuck Schumer, but in this case, I believe denying the SAVE America Act is an easy layup for Senate Democrats to prove they give a shit about something besides their stock portfolio.

It’s probably gonna be a weird one. If the president refuses to sign a bill that Congress has passed, it becomes law 10 days later. If he vetoes that bill, Congress can override his veto with a two-thirds majority. Given the lack of political unity in Congress these days, it might be challenging for either party to muster 60 votes on any serious piece of legislation.

So, why is Trump being so insistent about all of this? Well, two obvious reasons, I think: He recognizes that he and Republicans are wildly unpopular and unlikely to win bids for election or reelection in many districts, and even the presidency. Instituting widespread voter suppression now, while they retain broad power in the government, would be ideal if the goal is to maintain authoritarianism for the foreseeable future.

The other reason is, of course, simply that he despises trans people. Like many of Jeffrey Epstein’s close personal friends, Donald Trump would like to see trans people legislated out of existence, or at best reduced to perpetual poverty that forces us into sex work for his and his friends’ gratification.

So fuck Donald Trump, fuck Republicans, and fuck any Democrats who even consider giving ground on this in the weeks and months to come.

Aly Gibbs (She/They) is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/save-america-act at Mar 13, 2026, 7:19 PM EDT.

MAR 10, 2026, 9:00 AM EDT | ASSIGNED | SOURCE

Through the Medium of Comics, Trans Artists Tell Their Stories

As the representation of trans people in media wanes, there is one medium where trans people are still able to exist and tell their stories in spite of mainstream suppression: comics.

by Adelaide Kung

As the American public grows more hostile to transgender people, representation of trans lives in mainstream media is vanishing. According to GLAAD, a significant number of queer characters on TV will simply not return. Something about times like these drives one to read more comics.

As trans creators and characters are forced out of mainstream media, some are finding a niche outside of film and television, particularly in comics. Comics and graphic novels have had a long history of diverse representation and progressive politics, from the introduction of Black Panther during the 1960s heyday of the Civil Rights movement to the LGBTQ+ characters of Doom Patrol under the writer Rachel Pollack. However, there are darker chapters in this history, especially in regards to the treatment of writers from marginalized communities by the Marvel and DC editorial staff.

In order to better understand both of these aspects, Assigned Media spoke to two trans comic creators. Gretchen Felker-Martin is an author who has previously worked with DC. Keezy Young is an independent graphic novelist. Both have experienced roadblocks in the industry of comics, but both have also created stories that will outlive those roadblocks in the minds of readers.

Gretchen Felker-Martin may be best known for Manhunt, which was #1 on Vulture’s list of best books of 2022. She followed up with Cuckoo and then Black Flame, the latter of which she said is her proudest work from a personal standpoint. Black Flame is a fast-paced examination of how a German sniff film changes the life of the novel protagonist. For Felker-Martin it felt like a creative stretch. “I challenged myself to do something outside my wheelhouse, to be tight and focused where usually I'm interested in sprawl, and I'm very proud of the result,” she said. She is currently working on a story about criminal shapeshifters in New Hampshire called “CHIMERA”.

In addition to her novels, Felker-Martin has written for DC Comics, including a contribution to the 2024 DC Pride anthology, where she wrote a story featuring the canonically bisexual, plant-themed Batman villain Poison Ivy.

Additionally, she was offered the opportunity to write a limited series about Red Hood, a former protege of Batman who became a gun-wielding vigilante. Taking place outside the ordinary realm of DC superheroes, the series was set to traverse a mysterious new city inspired by New Orleans. Readers never had the chance to engage with the work, however, because Felker-Martin was abruptly dropped the day it was supposed to go on sale. Copies of the first book in the series were pulled from comic book shelves, all due to some Bluesky posts of Felker-Martin criticizing provocative right-wing statements by the deceased Charlie Kirk.

According to Felker-Martin, she was not warned. Although she was offered an opportunity to apologize, she declined, as she understood the firing was unlikely to be rescinded even if she did.

When asked if she stood by her statements, she said yes, but added “I don’t think I would speak on Kirk’s death again if I could go back because of the stress it caused my family and I.” Felker-Martin also reported discriminatory snubs due to her status as a trans woman, including exclusion from certain conventions. Many people suspect Felker-Martin was used as a scapegoat because of her status as a transgender woman—she was the highest-profile firing from DC Comics during the aftermath of Kirk’s death. Felker-Martin declined to comment on previous specific instances of transphobia other than those coming in the aftermath of her firing, citing professional etiquette as a comic creator.

But all is not unwell in the world of comics. In independent comics, an alternative world to the corporate DC and Marvel has grown by leaps and bounds, as seen with very popular TV series such as Invincible, The Boys, Sweet Tooth, Umbrella Academy and The Walking Dead all being based on indie comics. Keezy Young is a Seattle-based comic artist specialized in writing for children and young adults, who draws influence from creators such as Mike Mignola, David Aja or Fiona Staples in their colorful and evocative art style.

Much of their work is in the horror genre for a simple reason, which is that this is where their passion lies. “I have always loved horror, though, ever since I was a little kid reading Goosebumps and Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark, and watching X-Files and Stephen King movies through the slats in the stairs after I was supposed to go to bed,” Young told Assigned Media.

Their latest and most well known work is Hello Sunshine, a graphic novel about a troubled teenage boy who disappears and never comes back.

“I came up with the first inklings of Hello Sunshine while recovering from a very difficult year of psychosis and mania and depression, after finding out that my nana, who I inherited my illness from, was dying.” The book deals with these themes in a thoughtful and compassionate way, almost like a friend consoling you in the aftermath of a personal loss. Hello Sunshine has won a Graphic Novel & Comic Round Table Award (abbreviated as GNCRT) from the American Library Association.

Hello Sunshine depicts characters from a variety of backgrounds, especially queer ones. Alex, the instigating character in the story’s conflict, is gay as is his love interest Noah, who is the first perspective character, and two other protagonists are respectively lesbian and transgender.

In talking about this, Young says “I’m surrounded by a vast variety of different ways queerness presents itself, different people who see themselves as queer (or who don’t), and different ways that queerness impacts people’s lives. It was important to me to suggest at least some of that vastness in Hello Sunshine.”

With a subject like mental illness, stigmatization can be the norm. Young says they worked to avoid historically demonizing tropes in horror media around mental illness in the work, even though an instance of psychosis is a major catalyst in the story of Hello Sunshine. “I would love for kids to come away with a greater understanding and compassion for people who experience psychosis, as well as some tools to be able to recognize its symptoms,” said Young.

“People with psychosis can have meaningful lives, with romance, friendship, and joy. But they need support from the people who love them to get there.”

When asked whether censorship played a role in the development of Hello Sunshine, Young responded that they had not faced any censorship from their publisher, and that they were not aware of any attempts to ban Hello Sunshine, with the caveat “that doesn’t mean it won’t be, or that it hasn’t been quietly just kept off the shelf.”

Young’s primary concern is that creators will be pressured by the modern social environment to self-censor. Even without overt bans, they say, there may be consequences for queer fiction, especially for young readers. Citing organizations such as Authors Against Book Bans, Young told Assigned Media “I would urge any author with concerns to not give up out of hand, and certainly not to give up without a fight”

Both Felker-Martin and Young want the field of comics to continue to grow. When Felker-Martin was asked on how trans authors can get into comics, she cautioned against corporate entanglement but encouraged them to “Create a zine with your friends.” Despite her experiences with the industry, she encourages creators to find their own spaces and own voice.

Keezy Young concluded the interview by saying in reference to the medium of comics “It’s such a creative medium, and one that anybody can do if they have a pen and some paper. I would love it if Hello Sunshine was the reason they picked that pen up.” There’s immense possibility with independent comics as a field, and for a trans person with a creative mind and a good eye, it could be a livelihood, a lifeline and a good way to pick up a pen.

Adi Kung is a journalist, writer and poet. She currently resides in New York.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/trans-comics-artists at Mar 13, 2026, 7:19 PM EDT.

MAR 9, 2026, 10:00 AM EDT | ASSIGNED | SOURCE

Trans on Tape: The Chicago Teachers’ Union Shows Up For Trans Community And Trans Leaders Speak On A Showing Of Heightened Scrutiny

In the midst of national attacks on trans people, the Chicago Teachers’ Union hosted a screening of the documentary Heightened Scrutiny and gave local trans speakers an opportunity to speak.

text and photos by Piper Bly

“When we think about what it looks like in 2024 in the United States to be a trans person, your ability to inhabit that body becomes the subject and the site of social and legal control.”

That’s Chase Strangio’s opening line in the documentary Heightened Scrutiny, directed by Sam Feder. Released last year in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling on US v. Skrmetti, the film follows ACLU attorney Chase Strangio’s life in the months leading up to his landmark brief at the Supreme Court, and also features many prominent members of the trans press and legal circles, including a guest appearance from Assigned editor-in-chief Evan Urquhart.

Unfortunately, the film is hard to get a hold of. The documentary has seen limited screenings, is not currently available on streaming or rental services, and is nearly impossible to track down through other means as well. If you missed the very brief periods in 2025 when it was available online, you may be out of luck.

A crowded room of attendees sit in front of two identical screens that take up half the room, with a series of couches and a panel of trans rights advocates and community leaders sitting on a stage below.

Sadly, as we reported here on Assigned,, Chase’s legal team did not win their case, and the Court ruled that trans folk were not entitled to equal protection under the law. As Dr. Corey Lascano (she/they) put it, “our current moment is grim, and it’s heavy with the weight of grief and fear as we see our rights being taken away almost daily.”

After the film, Dr. Lascano led local trans advocates and community leaders in a panel discussion that was, as they insisted, “not about despair. It is about hope, that is driven by action.”

A portrait of Dr. Corey Lascano, wearing black-rimed glasses, trans pride earrings, and a short pencil dress, speaking on stage to a crowd of attendees, with an ASL interpreter off to their right.

Chase’s legal team did not win their case, and the Court ruled that trans folk were not entitled to equal protection under the law. As Dr. Corey Lascano (she/they) put it, “our current moment is grim, and it’s heavy with the weight of grief and fear as we see our rights being taken away almost daily.”

After the film, Dr. Lascano led local trans advocates and community leaders in a panel discussion that was, as they insisted, “not about despair. It is about hope, that is driven by action.”

Milo Vieland, a younger masculine figure with a buzz cut, a maroon button-up shirt, black trousers and white trainers, sits with his legs crossed on a sofa as he answers a question from Dr. Lascano.

Milo Vieland (he/him), Trans Health Law Program Coordinator at Legal Council for Health Justice, gave some expanded context to Skrmetti’s ongoing effects, stating “One way that we’re seeing the effects of Skrmetti happening already are, there were a series of cases in federal courts around the country that were decided in favor of civil rights at the lower court level, and then the Skrmetti decision..came down, and the Supreme Court directed those lower courts to re-open those cases…saying to them, we now have this supreme court case that rolls back trans civil rights, and we want you to take a look at these decisions that you already made, because we think that the civil rights that you upheld there are no longer supported.”

One common misconception about Skrmetti is that the ruling does not outright ban trans youth healthcare; rather, it leaves the discussion on whether to ban care up to the states, As Vieland put it, “We know there’s often such a big difference between the law on the books, and what people are experiencing in real life…so I think so often that answers to questions about the law is less a question of ‘what is the law’.”

“The answer to legal questions is not strictly legal, it’s political.”

Asher McMaher, a masc figure with curly bangs covering one eye, black-rimmed glasses, and a suit jacket covering a Trans Up Front T-shirt, speaks into the microphone.

Asher McMaher (they/them), executive director of Trans Up Front, added, “Our organization founded the gender affirming navigation system for our state, and its not just this state, it’s all the states surrounding us, and everyone who’s trying to leave their states to access care, and one of the things I say so often is that we can’t become complacent about our sanctuary status.”

“Just over a year ago, Lurie Children’s was the first children’s hospital to roll back…and we’re watching it continue to snowball and roll. And we’re moving into a time where healthcare is turning into a place of privilege, paying out of pocket.”

“When we’re looking at cases like this, it’s giving people the ability to have a precedent to say ‘ope, you can’t have this either.’”

“The thing is that, we’ve endured…As we make it through this administration, despite these legal issues, I know in my heart–hopefully, I can’t do it without doing this work–that we’ll continue to endure and move forward.”

A portrait of Skai Underwood, a smiling Black femme figure wearing a New York Yankees hat and wearing a denim jacket, and Channyn Lynne Parker, a Black femme figure in a bright yellow shirt and braids with black cargos and holding a microphone. Channyn looks like she just told a joke, and Skai is laughing.

On the topic of systemic oppression and privilege, Channyn Lynne Parker (she/her), Chief Executive Officer of Equality Illinois, commented further on Illinois’ sanctuary status, saying, “I love this topic, because sometimes we treat (our status as a) sanctuary state a bit like a welcome mat. Like it’s just this thing that just kind of sits there as a platitude but not as something that we are taking concerted effort into installing state-wide.”

“Santuary state means nothing if the sanctuary does not reach your school, your clinic, your home, and even more narrowly your block.”

“Regardless of what policy may pass…young people, particularly black and brown trans and non-binary people still have the trauma….doesn’t translate into real life and what you said about lived experience. Policy should be the ceiling, but lived experience is the floor.”

“We need to narrow that gap between the two.”

Reyna Ortiz, an Indigenous femme with cat’s-eye glasses, long brown hair, and an olive coat, speaks into a microphone.

Reyna Ortiz (she/her), program director of Taskforce Prevention, added, “As an Indigenous person, I really do feel compelled to talk that gender variant people on this land here have been at war for five hundred years.”

“These are the kind of things we have to talk about, because these systems still exist. And not only have our communities evolved…but these systems have evolved to. And the same systems that used to feed people like me to the dogs four hundred and eighty years ago are still oppressing us, brutalizing us, and killing us.”

“I think we can have these conversations in a hundred different ways, but if we’re not addressing these systems that are putting us at risk…that are forcing our children to kill themselves, we are going to continue to have these conversations for another five hundred years.”

Reyna Ortiz and Asher McMaher sit next to each other, with Reyna speaking into a microphone.

She went on, addressing income and housing inequality in the trans population in Chicago: “There are youth, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen year old trans kids sleeping on the streets. That is not safe, and there is nothing sanctuary about it..and until we start having these conversations and addressing systematic barriers, we’re still going to have these issues”

Channyn added, “Systemic oppression does not pause for progressive legislation. And I think oftentimes, we really do believe that..and that goes to show how far removed we can be.”

“If we don’t have resources that follow rhetoric, then what we do is for naught.”

A portrait of the four panelists, with Albi Gutierrez speaking to the crowd.

Albe Gutierrez (she/her/ella), art therapist at Chicago Therapist Collective, thanked Reina for acknowledging the Indigenous ancestry of the region and the gender-expansive history we all share, stating, “What has guided this wisdom through centuries is continuing to be examples of what is possible.”

“I think about who was I as a youth–a young person, a queer person, gender-expansive–and what led me to become the trans adult I am now, with the grey hair, and the aging!….is seeing that there is possibility. And I think that’s one of the strongest things adults can do for trans youth…is to ensure that there is an example of life for queer adults.”

A portrait of the four panelists, with Albi Gutierrez speaking to the crowd.

Speaking to those of us who may lose access to healthcare, and to those who may never have had access to that care to begin with, Albe quoted the late Chicagoan Aerin “Nefertiti” Pussy Cooper, who passed away in 2019: “I don’t need hormones, sister, because I am naturally transsexual!”

“There is something so brilliant about not needing to change to exist in your fullness…If medical transition might not be a possibility,” Albe reminded the crowd, “the existence of trans-ness exists beyond that.”

“Trauma tends to narrow our perspective, and shorten our sense of the future…and if we can practice expanding perspectives for queer people around us, especially trans youth, that goes a long way towards supporting their mental health.”

A portrait of Skai Underwood, speaking into the microphone. Channyn Lynne Parker sits behind her, looking out into the audience.

Skai Underwood (she/her), youth engagement specialist at TaskForce Prevention and lead facilitator at PrEP4Teens, spoke from her experiences being a mentor to trans kids: “You have to meet the youth where they’re at. And we can’t sit here and think that we’re gonna get their attention if they’re gonna sit here being lectured.”

“I teach about ballroom history at CPS Schools, teaching them about the history of queerness. That’s something that I feel like, it should be taught in classrooms, because that’s a part of black history. That’s a part of black and brown history, it’s a part of our history as Americans, to be honest.”

“That history should be taught….giving them courage, letting them know ‘hey, it’s okay, you’re not different, you’re just like everybody else’. I think that’s the biggest thing.”

All of the panelists having a conversation, with Asher McMaher holding the mic. An ASL interpreter sits on a desk in the foreground.

The screening and panel may have been one-night-only, but this won’t be the last we hear from these trans community leaders. Trans Day Of Visibility is coming up, and the fine folks at Trans Up Front (as well as multiple other Chicago-based organizations) are already planning a second follow-up rally to last year’s rally, which we covered here on Assigned.

Stay tuned, and stay safe.

–PIPER

Piper Bly is a professional illustrator and underground cartoonist. When she’s not busy plowing away at her drawing board, singing dirges in the moonlight, or wandering throughout the United States, she can often be found tending to her ivies, frying up some biscuits, spending unreasonable hours in the gym, or floating above the Mississippi River at midnight, waiting for the tide to wrap her in its loving embrace and take her away. Her whereabouts are currently undisclosed. You, however, can find her at piperbly.com.

This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/chicago-teachers-union-heightened-scrutiny at Mar 13, 2026, 7:19 PM EDT.

MAR 9, 2026, 7:00 AM EDT | ASSIGNED | SOURCE

Republicans Signal Anti-Trans Intent

Leading Off: The Iowa and New Hampshire Houses pass some of the most aggressive anti-trans policies yet seen in the US.

by Assigned Media

One year ago, the Iowa state legislature passed a bill removing trans people as a protected class from state level anti-discrimination policies, a bill which marked the first time in US history that a class has had its protected status revoked. Now, the state has expanded its undoing of trans rights with the House voting in favor of a bill that would restrict the adoption of anti-discrimination policies for trans people by counties and cities as well.

Not only would this new bill prevent the adoption of future protections, it also seeks to undo existing protections in numerous municipalities across the state, which, The Advocate reports, accounts for around a third of the state’s population. These municipal protections were passed largely as a response to the state’s revocation of protection for trans people last year.

Another provision of this bill would do away with the requirement for cities with over 29,000 residents to maintain a civil rights commission. This bill has yet to pass the state Senate and will also need approval of the governor before official adoption into law.

New Hampshire is also advancing a novel restriction of trans rights, with the state House voting in favor of a bathroom ban. The New Hampshire legislature has attempted three other times in the last three years to pass a ban, with the most recent attempt occurring just a month ago.

This bill takes things a step further than the previous attempts, as well as further than most other versions of this type of policy across the US, by having the ban extend to private businesses as well as state buildings. The bill seeks to criminalize violations of the ban by defining instances of a trans person entering a bathroom not matching their gender assigned at birth as ‘willful trespass’.

While previous bills like this have passed the state Senate, none have been so extreme as this one, so it is yet to be seen whether this will pass. And, if it does, New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte has already vetoed previous bathroom bans, calling them “overly broad and impractical to enforce.”

While the chances of passage are, ultimately, unlikely, this escalated version of a familiar type of bill serves as a signifier of the Right’s goals for legislation surrounding trans people.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/iowa-new-hampshire-anti-trans-bills at Mar 13, 2026, 7:19 PM EDT.

Table of Contents

Assigned Media: 2026 Mar 13

All articles

TWIBS: Iowa Lawmakers Hate Iowans

How Resiliant Are You?

Does The New York Times Want to Eradicate Trans People?

SAVE America Act Designed to Doom Americans

Through the Medium of Comics, Trans Artists Tell Their Stories

Trans on Tape: The Chicago Teachers’ Union Shows Up For Trans Community And Trans Leaders Speak On A Showing Of Heightened Scrutiny

Republicans Signal Anti-Trans Intent